When Training by Yourself, Imagine Your Opponent is in front of You

When practicing our forms we must follow the principles of each hand technique. Each hand has its own position, which must be right. By doing this we can develop good position and the principles of the technique. Every hand technique has its own purpose so we must practice as if there is an opponent in front of us.

How do we do this? For example when we use Taan Sau 攤手 we should think about how the Taan Sau works and how we use it. If we are performing Fuk Sau 伏手, we should think about how we rest our hand on the opponent’s hand. If we use Bong Sau 膀手 then we should think about how and when we use it. The same is true for all other hand techniques, if we never thought about how to use them we will never get them right. That is why when studying Wing Chun we need to do a lot of thinking and not only just follow, learn and copy. We also can pull out any hand techniques from the form to practise it individually. We can think about how those hands work and how those does not work. Also we can change those hands to be in many different situations and way to do that. However, in the beginning, when we are learning we need to follow the teacher, and then once we have learnt it we need to ask ourselves if we are doing it right or how we could use it better. We should use this method to make all and techniques better.

Michael Tse

Share this entry

Hi Sigong, thank you for another great Wing Chun article. As always a lot to think about and work on this week. It has been great working on the foundations of the skill each week, and as the foundations get stronger I find that everything that is built on them also improves and gets stronger.

Hello Sigong,very good article,Thanks for sharing this.Even i know i have to think about Wing Chun hands,is quite difficult to understand,how it works in chi sau,everything happens so fast that you don’t know whats happening,but i suppose as you get better it will fold into place.Looking forward to read you next one.
Warm Regards
Manuel